The magic solution

I have to tell you...DH (Dear Husband) was going through some boxes, he too has caught the dejunking train at our house, and he found two baby shirts from when he was a baby. Since he is a twin, there were two identical shirts. He came home early one day and I found him watching Martha Stewart (what's up with that?) and it was a segment on family where they showed how you can save your own or your children's baby clothes or special books and put them in a shadow box (of course, Martha makes some that you can buy at Michael's. What isn't she into?) to use as art in their bedroom and as a keepsake. So he got this idea that he wants to do the shirts in shadow boxes. Only one problem. They looked terrible. Yellowed and water stains on them that looked like someone had spilled coffee or tea on them. My friend Sooz is always telling me about her magic laundry solution. And I asked her what she would do to clean these 50 yr. old shirts. I was afraid at first to use bleach on them. She told me to try the magic solution on them. So in a bucket, (Sooz uses her washing machine to soak clothes, I find a bucket easier for me) I put one part dishwasher detergent (also known as Cascade, I used liquid), one part laundry detergent (a.k.a. Tide) and one part dry bleach(a.k.a. Oxyclean). What does this one part business mean? Well, what I did and maybe it was wrong, was to use the amount of laundry detergent I would normally use and then the same amount aproximately of the Cascade and then one scoop of the Oxyclean. I then filled the bucket with hot water enough that would cover the shirts. I then soaked them for maybe 7 or 8 hours. I then washed on an express cycle with bleach in it. And because I put more detergent in with the bleach on the wash cycle, foolishly, I put it through two more cycles without anything in it to get all of the soap out of them. What came out were two clean, white shirts, looking like they did 50 yrs. ago. So try it for your gray whites, stained tablecloths, etc. In retrospect, I should have maybe used less volume of the detergents per my two little shirts I was working on. But hey, I'm new to this and learning as I go.